His clocks might melt, but his mustache didn’t
Dali’s well-preserved remains dug up for tests
FIGUERES, Spain — Forensic experts in Spain have removed hair, nails and two long bones from Salvador Dali’s embalmed remains to aid a court-ordered paternity test that may enable a woman who says she is the artist’s daughter to claim part of Dali’s vast estate.
Officials said Friday that the mummified remains were so well preserved that his famous mustache remained in “its classic shape of ten past ten,” referring to the hands on a clock.
Dali, who once said “surrealism is me,” is considered one of the founding fathers of the artistic movement. The artistic genius was buried in the Dali Museum Theater in the northeastern Spanish town of Figueres, his birthplace, when he died at 84 in 1989.
The exhumation that began Thursday night followed a longstanding claim by Pilar Abel, a 61-year-old tarot card reader, who says her mother had an affair with Dali.
In June, a Madrid judge ruled that a DNA test should be performed.
Lluis Penuelas Reixach, the secretary general of the Gala-salvador Dali Foundation, said Dali’s remains — including his mustache — are well preserved after an embalming process was applied 27 years ago.
Representatives of the foundation, which manages Dali’s estate on behalf of the Spanish state, said Friday the evidence backing Abel’s claims weren’t enough to justify the intrusive exhumation.
Dali and his Russian wife Gala had no children of their own.
Abel was born in Girona, a city close to Figueres.
She said she pressed for the exhumation because legal proof of Dali’s paternity would honor the memory of her mother.
If proved right, Abel could claim one-fourth of the painter’s estate, according to her lawyer, Enrique Blanquez.
If she is proved wrong, the Dali foundation will seek compensation for the costs of the exhumation.
The foundation and the museum took steps to make sure no images of the exhumation were made public.
The biological samples will travel to in Madrid for analysis that could take weeks.